Some recon that their cars run better on one brand of fuel than another, or Supermarket fuel reduces the performance/ economy compared to petrol company filling stations

There was a tanker driver on another forum who delivers fuel - the same fuel to supermarkets as petrol company filling stations

Your Ford was designed to run on poor quality realatively low- octane fuel from other countries, because in some other countries, that is all that is available

So in the UK, the cheapest supermarket fuel is more than good enough

Ford recommends BP probably because the companies are connected (BP owns Ford or vice versa) not because of any technical advantage BP has over other fuel companies

Octane - a Tv car programme tested various types of fuel and found the expensive "higher performance" high octane fuel made the car SLOWER and the best MPG/ per £ was from the cheapest fuel available

(the cheapest fuel gave the most miles per £)

This was on "ordinary" cars

On high performance turbo cars however, EG - 300+ BHP EVOs/ Impretzas etc, there was a significant, power/ torque gain with higher octane fuel (eg Shell high octane) when the car was mapped to take advantage of the fuel

I know someone with a 600Hp EVO that has to run high octane fuel, and if regular fuel was used it would destroy his engine

There is a political reaon for choosing to buy fuel from small independant garages, because if nobody does, they will go out of business, leaving the "big 4" supermarkets (or should i say the "quite big 3 and Tesco") to be the only outlets for fuel in the UK

One other thing - the ECU in you car "learns" - it learns driving style and can adapt for different qualities of fuel, it may find an advantage in better/ higher octane fuel, it also adapts to lower quality / octane fuel, (so it is safe to use the cheapest regular pump fuel available in the UK ) - the difference between the best/ worst fuels (when running a "regular" car) may be quite subtle - you may have to reset your ECU to notice any difference

Big debate this but to be honest use what works for you, I personally use BP standard diesel and a cap of millers ecomax every fill up, this is cheaper than using BP Ultimate every time, for me this feels right for my car. My father has exactly the same car and runs it on Shell standard diesel and it feels the same to drive. I personally dont like using supermarket fuels as my car ran like a bag of spanners after using tesco fuel for a few months. Again this is only my opinion, I know a lot of people who are happy to use supermarket fuel and do get relatively good mpg from it